A vehicular meter of this kind is known, as disclosed in JP-A-11-211512 and JP-A-11-64033. The vehicular meter disclosed is provided with a liquid crystal indication element (or indication element) for indicating a piece of information such as the travel distance of a vehicle, a hard circuit board arranged on the back of the liquid crystal indication element, a switch element mounted on the circuit board, and an operation shaft adapted to be manually pushed for actuating the switch element. In response to the pushing operation of the operation shaft, the value (or information) indicated in the liquid crystal indication element is reset or interchanged by another kind of information.
The operation shaft is assembled together with an elastic member made of a coil spring into the vehicular meter. This coil spring biases the operation shaft in a non-pushing direction so that the operation shaft is pushed to actuate the switch element and so that the operation shaft is returned to the initial position when the resetting or indication switching of the information indicated in the liquid crystal indication element is ended. At a case provided separately of the circuit board or an optical guide for holding an indication panel, there is formed a support portion for holding the operation shaft and the coil spring. At this support portion, the operation shaft holds the coil spring so that it can be pushed and returned.
In the vehicular meters disclosed in the above-specified individual publications, however, at the parts such as a case or an optical guide plate (usually molded of a synthetic resin) to be prepared separately of the circuit board, it is necessary to form the portion for supporting the operation shaft or the coil spring, such as a holding portion or a guide portion for supporting the operation shaft stably, a spring holding portion for holding the coil spring stably, or a regulating portion for limiting the movement of the operation shaft. Therefore, the shapes of the parts are complicated to raise a problem that the cost for manufacturing the mold or the working cost rises thereby to invite an increase in cost.
The present invention has been conceived in view of those points and has a main object to provide a vehicular meter, which is enabled to realize a decrease in cost by suppressing the complicated structure of peripheral parts for supporting an operation shaft or an elastic member.